


A Sought After Refuge

by candyriot



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Fanart, M/M, Multi, Thanatos POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:53:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27347692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candyriot/pseuds/candyriot
Summary: The lives of immortals little change with time, until the sudden imposition of Prince Zagreus on Thanatos' eternity,  kindling flames old and new.With artwork by the fantastic@ystrae.
Relationships: Megaera/Thanatos (Hades Video Game), Megaera/Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game), Megaera/Zagreus (Hades Video Game), Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 125





	A Sought After Refuge

_"Our responsibilities must have us cross paths often, yes. But I didn't really get to know her until after the whole humiliating affair with Sisyphus."_

_"Oh, right. He got stuck in Tartarus after that, under Meg's personal supervision. So you bonded over your shared disdain for Sisyphus?"_

_"We each had to blow off some steam, yes. That was some of the hardest I ever worked, back then, and her, too, I think. When you go through something like that with someone, it brings you closer, I suppose."_

He’d been absolutely humiliated by the evil and conniving King Sisyphus of Ephyra, tricked by the deceitful man into the pair of shackles intended for the king himself after his banishment to the Underworld by Zeus.

It infuriated him, knowing that the whole House and Olympus knew of the shame he’d been fooled into. He’d been seen by numerous shades, none of whom had the power to free him, one of which at last gained audience to relay his plight to Lord Hades while he wallowed in indignity in Tartarus. 

He would have despised anyone who showed him pity for his humiliation as much as he despised the bastard king. 

Megaera showed him no pity. She said _Thanatos, how long are you going to let that mortal get under your skin?_

Then she shoved him back against the wall, knocking the wind from him, his dropped scythe disappearing in a flash of green. She crushed her mouth to his while his grasping hands found purchase and urged her closer. He might be a god, but her titanic strength exceeded his own. 

__Her own work had been difficult lately, that much he knew. Not half on account of the recaptured knave-king. There were few worse in Tartarus than that treacherous wealth and power hungry man who’d taken pleasure in murder. Her job to exact punishment for his horrendous crimes condemned her to dwelling on their depravity._ _

__He had her in his lap in her bed, buried his face in her breasts as she dragged his mouth where she demanded it, wrenching him by his long, loose grey hair, her fingers buried close to his scalp. Her own lavender hair was as long, longer, the two of them curtained in each other. When she allowed him to thrust as he would she coaxed him forward, demanding he spend himself on her pleasure. In her bed he forgot all his cares and did his all to relieve her of hers._ _

__The Erinys remained his lover until their respective tempers cooled. He took no offense that she had no particular sexual interest in him when his frustration has been vented and he resumed his typical preoccupation with his work. He had no influence over her, Megaera a being younger than the eldest Olympians but born of Titan blood before the mortal age while he himself arrived in the mortals’ youth._ _

__It didn’t mean he never touched her naked skin again, or that he never learned his way around both ends of a whip, but they needed no words to communicate their understanding that the two of them were each no more than the other’s trusted friend._ _

____

\----

_"It sure must have taken a lot of courage for you to come right up and tell me you thought I looked better before I cut my hair. I still ask myself how come I didn't keep ignoring you after that. Or slice your head off."_

When the child was delivered into the House, Thanatos had no use for it.

He was aware of its arrival some time after the flight of the queen and was surprised that his mother would consort with Lord Hades, though he was far too respectful of her to question the events as they were related to him until many years hence — and even at that time, only to himself.

Nyx raising a new brother entailed no engagement on his part, just as his other siblings had had little to do with himself and Hypnos and he little to do with them. 

His duties kept him constantly busy, and, anyway, Hypnos had the better temperament for interacting with an infant, then toddler, then inquisitive boy when Nyx needed to ask someone to mind the latest arrival to their ever-growing family. Even if his mercurial brother fell asleep on the job more than thrice, it’s not as if anything serious could befall Zagreus within the safety of the House, dark hair and mismatched eyes and burning feet.

While after several centuries Zagreus registered as a nearing-adult personage at the boundaries of Thanatos’ awareness, Thanatos ignored him as far as he was able. He barely had patience for Hypnos who was, although only in theory, a mature god. He saw no potential positives to socializing with the young, loud, emotive and patently obnoxious Zagreus.

It was after a day in which, regarding himself in the mirror, he twined his his long hair around his fingers and looked on it disdainfully that he had the length of it severed. He enjoyed his new lightness of carriage. He enjoyed sweeping his fingers through its cropped strands to feel them fall breezily back into place and the feeling of cool air on the back of his neck.

Zagreus approached him for the first time. The brash youth with his stark heterochromia greeted him with a confident smile, eyes bright and words sincere when he told him:

“You looked better before you cut your hair.”

At a loss for words, Thanatos thought for a fleeting moment that he must have somehow misheard him.

“It looked good on you, long,” Zagreus stressed as if this was in some way a compliment.

It wouldn’t do to strike this brother upon their first introduction, although Thanatos found himself entirely willing. Instead, he scowled at the interloping prince.

“And you mean to tell me it’s not suited to me, short?”

Puzzlement clouded the young god’s features.

“I just thought you might want to grow it out again.”

“After I _just_ cut it?”

The young Zagreus thought hard on this, with great consternation. 

Comprehension dawned.

“If this is how you like it, then I can get used to it,” he said.

Thanatos flicked his fingers through his short bangs, a leftover habit from brushing his obtrusive locks from his eyes, snorting disdain.

“I’m grateful to have your blessing, your _highness_.”

Regret worried the prince’s brow.

“You’re angry with me, aren’t you? Don’t be angry with me.”

Thanatos moderated his voice.

“Angry? No. I appreciate you keeping me away from my work to let me know my appearance isn’t to suit. If you’ll excuse me, I have business on the surface.”

He _was_ angry, but it would give him no pleasure to exact revenge on someone as obviously out of his depth as Zagreus was then.

The mysterious thing was that that poor introduction led to Zagreus addressing him readily and Thanatos consenting to respond. Grudgingly, at first, but soon enough willingly. 

As haplessly rash and rude as the sheltered son of Hades might have been, he made up for it in kind-hearted enthusiasm.

\----

_"Good to see you taking little Mort there on one of your strolls. Means I can better keep an eye on you out there."_

_"He's been great to have around, for sure. Still can't believe you found him after all this time! You used to always carry him around, I was so sad for you when he got lost."_

_"And I cannot believe you still remember that. Regardless, he will not be getting lost again under your supervision, accurate?"_

Thanatos didn’t understand his mother’s fondness for stitching tiny bodies for musings that formed in her darkness, creatures with a closer affinity to shades than gods, preoccupied with a few small thoughts.

He felt no affection for shades. They milled endlessly through the Underworld, still moaning about mortal complaints, fixated on the short lives they had lived on the surface. If he felt sympathy for the horrible plights he found them in when trapped in their dying bodies — this no matter how many tens of thousands he’d reaped — and if humans impressed him in one way or another, at other times, these things were incidental to his ennui with the already-departed.

The shades treated him with the reverence he expected. Death. With a thought, he could dissolve them, leaving them to reform some time later, intact but disoriented, just as, on the surface, he severed them from their bodies to reform them in Erebus. It did them no violence, the dissolution sudden and total, although he would have to admit, if pressed, that rebuking violent shades gave him a thrill of pleasure he would never speak of unbidden. He didn’t believe himself to be cruel.

Mort didn’t treat him with reverence. The creature had confidence many times greater than his minuscule size. He promised, upon being placed under Thanatos’ care by Mother Nyx, that he wouldn’t fail to protect his master. 

Thanatos could only scoff. _What, precisely, do I need protection from?_ But Mort flared his little rodent-like ears and twitched his tiny paws and shades inexplicably cowed before him.

Only after some time did Thanatos recognize the act of reaping had become less lonely with the small being accompanying his person throughout the Underworld and even to the surface.

Then, one day or night, he returned to the House only to discover that Mort had, somewhere, become separated from him — a very small creature with a very small voice, either having simply fallen from his chiton or been led astray by curiosity.

He stood staring into the Styx. He heard but didn’t respond to Zagreus’ barefoot approach.

The prince folded his arms on the stone balcony railing and for a moment watched the river with him, then turned his head toward Thanatos.

“Than, are you alright? You’ve been… well, you’re always moody. But you’ve been moodier than usual.”

“What? _Tsch._ I haven’t. I’ve been thinking. You wouldn’t be familiar with it. I can’t find Mort, and I’m trying to remember where I lost him.”

A shock of resentment struck Thanatos to realize he had either allowed Zagreus to become so thoroughly well acquainted with him he’d recognize such an intensification in his mood, or that he was being far more obvious about his disquiet than he had believed. 

As much as he had begun to care for the prince, he valued his privacy.

“Oh,” Zagreus mused — then, straightening startled from his slouch: “ _Oh_ , I’m sorry. I know you two are close.”

“Don’t misunderstand. He’s only a figment. He barely exists.”

“He’s barely existed for a long time,” Zagreus said with gentle and unwelcome empathy.

Thanatos shook his head.

“Forget I said anything.”

\----

_"I... think Chaos wishes to reestablish contact with you, Nyx. The two of you drifted apart from one another, so, I think I can imagine. I lost touch with Thanatos awhile! But that was nothing in comparison to this."_

He had understood that somewhere, in some unknown seismic shift, things between himself and Zagreus changed.He had inexplicably found himself frustrated more and more easily by the prince, who, coincidentally, in the course of being asked to take on more duties by Lord Hades and failing to excel at them expressed his frustration through obnoxiousness. With these mutually exacerbating factors it finally seemed better for the both of them if Thanatos maintained his distance.

After all, he wasn’t leaving him lonely.

Zagreus had had Meg. In Thanatos’ conversations with Meg the Erinys had plenty to say about how infuriatingly dense he could be. About his carelessly rude remarks. About the slovenly disorder of his chambers. Once, when Zagreus offended her to the point of vindictiveness, about how if his human-blooded skin didn’t raise red welts on its milky surface under her whip when she had him on his knees she’d probably have left the princely quarters they cohabited years ago.

That stolen image had remained with Thanatos since, intruding at odd moments, but her complaints, all of them coming from a place of affection in Meg’s own way, affirmed Zag was in a difficult phase indeed. Thanatos might care deeply for him but he had no obligation to force himself to endure it. Letting Zagreus sort himself appeared to him the prudent option.

It was years more before Zagreus separated from Meg in some exceptional emotional conflagration that he initially found the lovers each disinclined to discuss.

But that conflagration humbled the prince. Not at first — when, seeking Thanatos out for he had no dearer friend, he swore Megaera was impossible to cohabit with — but with time. He at last admitted to Thanatos he had been fraught with uncertainty over how close he and the Erinys had become and with sharing his waking life and all his space with a partner. 

“I didn’t want to take sides, but if I’m honest with you you were unbearable,” Thanatos said with a lift of his brow as they sat across from one another in the lounge, a smile at the corner of his lips disclaiming ‘no harm’.

“And you were well within your rights to avoid me,” Zagreus confessed in his newfound humility. “That's not who I want to be, Than. It’s not who I’m going to be, from now on.”

“Don’t promise too much too soon. But to be honest, the way you’ve carried yourself, lately… It’s going to take time for Magaera to forgive you, but as for me, I find you far more tolerable.”

Zagreus ducked his head, abashed but amused, looking up from beneath his brow, a smile playing on his own lips.

“Thanks, Than.”

The mysteriously disproportionate frustration Thanatos has been experiencing for so long ceded space to a startlingly gentle affection. 

—though the prince happened to have proven so thoroughly awful at administrative work that he was shortly relieved of all duties.

\----

_"Yes, that's what I'm saying, Than. I should not have left the way I did, without letting you know. But when you found me, I think that's when... that's when I knew, or started to realize, you know?"_

_"I... yes. I know, I think, because... when I heard you took off, the anger that I felt, it was... it wasn't something I expected."_

It was from a defeated Megaera that Thanatos learned Zagreus had absconded from the House, forever, for a life on Olympus and had absconded without so much as a farewell.

His fury flamed bright.

All these years together — the close friendship, the endearing traits and infuriating quirks, the fights, yes, but, too, the shared laughter — to a Zagreus preoccupied by his latest impulsive decision, they meant nothing.

He had trusted in Zagreus’ supposed newfound maturity far too soon. Had, he saw now, made more room for him in his life than he’d made already before their period of separation. 

And for what? To be cast aside for the company of the fickle Olympians with their feasts and their fights, their disloyalty and constant drama. 

Thanatos knew enough of it all to have no interest in them, except for a sparing appreciation of Hermes and Ares.

The fact of Zagreus’ betrayal — of the House, of Mother Nyx, of their Lord Hades, of their supposedly fond companionship — tore his thoughts from his duties again and again.

Uncharacteristically unable to restrain himself, knowing he’d get no work done without venting his spleen, he put himself on the prince’s trail. Through Tartarus, through Asphodel, and at last to Elysium.

\----

_"You're interrupting private conversation, Zagreus. Leave us."_

_"No, let him stay, if that's what he wants. What does it matter? He's technically allowed within these halls, but he must know he isn't welcome anymore."_

Thanatos had yet to acclimate himself to the reality:

Word said Zagreus, although returned to the House by a violent death, had defeated Theseus and the Bull of Minos, escaped Elysium and all but breached the surface. 

No question that the prince would pit himself against the time consuming task of ascending the Underworld again. And again. Until he achieved Olympus. 

Wherever his newfound and frankly uncharacteristic determination came from, it had proven itself absolute. No violence was too terrible to suffer.

Thanatos would lose him. What’s worse, he would be the architect of that loss, because he couldn’t keep away. 

If Zagreus dreamed of open skies and the splendors of Olympus — even if all their years of friendship and brotherhood meant nothing in comparison to the fantasy which had gripped him and no matter the anger it spurred in the God of Death — how could Thanatos not aid him in his goals?

Zagreus hated it here. He and Lord Hades couldn’t stand each other. For all Thanatos had vocally rejected Zag’s belief that he would have, upon hearing of the prince’s flight, understood, the truth was, despite being abandoned, he did understand. 

All the darkness that formed his being yearned for Zagreus to pursue any other dream, one that wouldn’t take him so far from these halls, but who could expect the prince to spend eternity as the underling of a father with whom he was in all ways incompatible?

So aid him he did, in secrecy, however brusquely he treated him in the company of others.

He feared that he would inevitably wreck his standing with Lord Hades and Mother Nyx, condemning himself to ignominy. 

He feared if Meg knew he had been indulging this obsession of Zag’s he would lose her, as well, and would have no one at all.

He’d have Hypnos, in his way, but he doubted he’d be any more tolerant of his frivolous twin in the aftermath of such shame.

And yet, Thanatos each time looked within himself he knew where his loyalty lay.

\----

_“...Answer me something, Zagreus. What am I to you, exactly, as of late? Because sometimes, with you, I…”_

The bottle of nectar, pulled from the folds of his chiton after he returned to the house from his duties, sat heavy in his hands. The mere restrained illumination of the House set the golden liquid glowing as if the bottle encapsulated the warmth of the mortal sun with none of its eye-stabbing discomfort.

_Nektar._ A poetic name. _The ability to overcome death._ Zag no doubt hadn’t thought a single time of the irony or the implications of handing him these bottles. 

Both the irony and implications resonated deeply with Thanatos each time he unstoppered a bottle to allow the sweet, transitory intoxication to pass over him when off duty.

A ridiculous gesture, and Zagreus should know it. No quantity of nectar could soothe the ever-bleeding wound of soon enough being left behind to his solitude and his duties in an Underworld absent of his dearest friend. 

...except that he knew the intoxication wasn’t the point. He knew, perhaps better than Zagreus, that the point was passing the bottle between hands, its glass still warm with the heat of the fire-footed prince’s body. With each exchange he saw the hope in the eyes, one infernal red and one vibrant green, that searched his own, a gaze unashamed of how dearly it yearned for forgiveness.

Never had Zagreus looked at him with such longing. After so many bottles, he could no longer assure himself that only Zag’s guilt spurred the young god on. It seemed as if a veil had fallen from between them, the emotions it had concealed rawer and more powerful than those they shared in temperance before.

...or did he only imagine it? Was it him, yearning alone, tricking himself into seeing something that truly dwelt only in his own inward parts which his fond wishes projected onto the prince in his desire to believe he couldn’t truly have been so cruelly discarded?

For all his millennia of existence he had no reference for the depth of the tumultuous emotions which now gripped him. He had forever been a god of diligence, duty, and brooding but measured contemplation, his fleeting passions momentarily consuming but merely carnal. 

No fleeting passion, this.

But what would he do, if he found such love returned? For halfway deep in the bottle, the soothing liquid stripped him bare of all denial it could be anything but love. To be loved in return, and by such a youthful, volatile and passionate force — was it a desire he truly wished to have fulfilled?

_Nektar._

It was not this divine liquid that possessed it but his close companion, Zagreus himself.

\----

_"You_ like _me, Zagreus...? I never thought, I... don't know why that sounds so strange, coming from you. Given everything that's happened as of late."_

_"Yeah. Look, if you don't feel the same way about me at this point, I would rather know. Cease all these coy gift exchanges, and all that."_

_"I never said anything like that! You know what, there's... a bunch of mortals I have to go fetch. Good-bye."_

Cowardice.

It could only be cowardice, to have Zagreus standing before him speaking words he’d longed to hear and to take flight to the surface into the miserable brightness of day. 

Even shielded beneath his hand, his inwardly lit yellow eyes winced against the assailing light. In truth, no mortal call yet quivered through the fabric of the universe like the plucked string of a lyre to summon him to a dying human’s side.

He hovered above the icy ground, bottle of ambrosia in his grasp, overlooking some small, nameless hamlet, a chill breeze beating his cheeks. The cold didn’t bother him, born as he was from the void of Nyx. Only the sun shining through the thin cloud cover did, which he adjusted to soon enough.

The humans might miss the summers, and this cruel endless winter at the whim of the fickle Demeter brought unprecedented deaths, but as for Thanatos he could privately do without seeing the full blazing light of the chariot of the now-lonely Helios again in all his godly existence.

‘Liked’ him. Zagreus. ‘Liked’ him. 

A word perhaps as coyly chosen as using the exchange of contraband to insist upon emotions until now entirely unspoken. Unless that was wishful thinking on Thanatos’ part, once again.

His inner parts coiled upon themselves, rent with emotion, a great labyrinth in his guts. Why had he fled? Why couldn’t he have articulated his own feelings in return, instead?

It was the fault of uncertainty. 

First, the prince had been a fact of his life which he had begun to take for granted again before the young god’s sudden, supposedly permanent, departure unbalanced him like nothing before.

Now, just as suddenly Zagreus intended to remain in the Underworld, or so he said — it didn’t appear to be a matter of personal choice but a demand of nature — and he had never been seeking the Olympians at all, but instead his queen mother.

What new revelation might blindside him, next?

But Thanatos wanted him. Under his hands. Beneath him. Above him. The two of them naked to one another, their forms conjoined.

He’d been wounded, but he desired him not one iota less for that.

He only needed to secure the fortitude to face his apprehensions face to face with Zagreus.

\----

_“I’ve known Megaera much longer than you. Who do you think talked me into this?”_

_“Hah! She did, did she? That’s good! That’s good.”_

“Zag and I worked it out, yeah,” Meg said over a lavishly decorated silver double-handled cup, a kantharos of the ambrosia Zagreus had gifted him which they had opened together.

They had retreated to her room where, unlike in his Spartan quarters, she kept a small table. It would be unbecoming of them to get drunk on ambrosia in public in the lounge.

“So you’ll be with him often, then,” Thanatos surmised, uncertain of his feelings at this news. 

In spite of evidence to the contrary, that Zagreus would ply him with rich gifts only to carelessly cast him aside for Meg didn’t strike him as a real possibility, and not only because he was in the presence of a whip that would lay stripes on him for becoming consumed with jealousy.

Meg chuckled, eyeing him over, sly amber gaze wickedly intent.

Zagreus might be his most cherished friend, but Meg? No one knew him better.

“I’m not planning on moving back into his room, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said. “But that’s not what you’re asking, is it, Than?”

The ambrosia went down smooth, a panoply of flavors, light, fresh, exquisite and far more intoxicating than only nectar, suffusing him with an inner glow.

“I’ve already had enough trouble with him without wondering about this,” he confessed, with nothing to hide.

Meg shrugged her pale, muscular shoulders, wing flexing in contemplation. He liked to see her like this, in informality with her bronze pauldrons and gorget removed, the elegant lines of her body bare to him.

“There’s nothing to wonder about. He’s young, and he’s… enthusiastic. That’s all. Whatever’s going on between you two has zero to do with him and me,” she said.

Thanatos smiled his affection over his own kantharos. Brusque as she was, the words were a kindness.

“Then, I can’t use this as an excuse to avoid him?”

“Won’t let you.”

He nodded amenably, making a study of the honied liquor in his cup. Raising his eyes to her, he said:

“I have a sense of self preservation.”

“Cute. But that’s not the reason you should go to him. Just… go to him.”

Megaera sat her cup down on the table and rose tall above him, a step closing the space between them, bringing her where Thanatos remained seated.

His eyelids fell shut at the touch of strong, elegant fingers on his chin that tilted his head up for Megaera to press her smug lips to his. With her lips, her blessing. 

Friendship without competition.

He lingered in the familiarity without pursuing more.

He sighed as she parted from him, brow troubled.

“Usually, I’d…”

Strong drink. Magaera, forever beautiful, her body studded with metal — wouldn’t he at least bury his face between her thighs to render her languid and smiling? Except the urge didn’t take him. On the contrary, he met a tangible restraint.

Meg laughed, still standing close, looking down on him in amusement and brushing her fingers through his short hair, lacquered nails grazing his skin.

“This isn’t ‘usually’, Than. Save it for Zag.”

He gazed down at the liquid amber of his drink, not unlike the bold color of her eyes, and then offered his kantharos up for her to sip from with a slight, defeated, but nonetheless grateful smile.

Save it for Zag.

Well, alright. For better or worse, he would.

\----

_“You have no concept of which impulses to act upon, and which to keep in check. You say you’ll wait, well, let me ask you this: What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for, I’m here, already. Right…?”_

_“Than…! Hahaha, oh, you’re right!”_

He breathed in the familiar scent of Zagreus’ body as the prince slid one hand over the metal of his regalia and knotted the fingers of the other in the chiton bunched at his waist. Thanatos himself lowered his cowl to his shoulders, then let a hand slip over Zagreus’ warm, bare, battle-hardened muscle to bury its fingers in the short hair of at his nape as their bodies came together, the incrementally shorter Zagreus rocking onto his toes as their mouths met.

They kissed chastely for only moments, Zag’s adventurous tongue licking into Thanatos’s mouth. Thanatos laughed into the deepening kiss, light and free, his eyes shut and the skulls of their belts, too, pressed face to face.

Joy overtook him kissing someone so dear to him, the young god he adored— his love, Zagreus.

Zagreus laughed against him, too, as experienced a kisser as Than would expect from Magaera’s lover. Plumbing Thanatos’ long-familiar mouth that more often chided and derided him surely held for Zagreus the same spark of adventure. 

They embraced one another closely with tender, curious hands as they took pleasure in this slow shift towards the unity of their affections, and of their forms. Zagreus shivered at the firm touch of Thanatos’ single gauntlet.

Their clothes were easily shed, piece after piece, until they were two bodies on a bed with nothing between them, one lava hot and one void cool, entangled in each other. 

Thanatos had never so happily explored a lover, Zagreus bold, playful, and unabashed, stroking Thanatos’ skin, now, his erect cock, next. He pulled his shaft with wicked delight as Thanatos groaned, submitting to being pleasured, pliant to his explorations.

What greater pleasure? What better lover than this clever, energetic young god? Who had he ever better cared for — loved? The loyalty that would have had him cast away all the respect he’d long worked for by backing Zagreus’ reckless gambit burned like Asphodel’s fiery river Phlegethon, no matter how cold his chthonic skin. They rolled together like puppies, playful, one on top and then the other. Pressed skin to skin Thanatos ached to know him deeper, to make a single entity of two beings. Mayhap a little of Zagreus’ glad determination would be fostered within himself for all of time.

With the aid of the oil of pressed olives he requisitioned from the unquestioning head chef he brought Zagreus hot inside him, delight and laughter still shared between them as Zagreus experimented with force and angle until he had Thanatos moaning. 

Later, the God of Death would brood again. Now, he had absolute liberty to pleasure the heavy-panting god thrusting into his receptive, easily parted body. Zagreus persisted in repeating _Than, Than_ as Thanatos stroked his face and urged him to take from him all he desired. They groaned in pleasurable exertion and kissed their fill between breaths.

Two gods spilling seed — no small thing. The cosmic stuff of creation, though not in the present shape of their gladly joined bodies. 

They lay idle together, Thanatos’ body remembering the strength of the hips that collided with his own and Thanatos himself turning over memories of Zagreus in the throes of pleasure. He could hold him for an age and the happiness nurtured in his breast remain undiminished. Zagreus continued to explore him, as happily spent.

He thought of Magera leaving stripes on this skin in fond, nostalgic reminisce of what he recognized as his first sexual fantasy of his new lover.

He grew quiet, not in brooding but in contemplation of their shared future. 

A part of himself now belonged to the willful Zagreus, or had long belonged but was now to be dispensed with as the young god pleased. The prospect held no fear for him. Zagreus had matured from the brash godling he had been into a kind and conscientious god coming into both his responsibility and power. He discovered himself full willing to put faith in that, no matter how uncertain the road that had led to this moment.

Work never waited long, but he tarried moments kissing his fill and exploring beneath wandering hands the firm, compact body he would certainly take for his own satisfaction in a future such meeting. Zag returned his affections and went on expressing his fondness for his name.

\----

_"Meg, you know what's going on with Than and me, don't you? I just... want things to be out in the open, between us."_

_"Oh I know everything about you, Zag. And Thanatos, maybe even better. Though I appreciate you telling me. It's fine."_

.

_"Just catching up on things with Megaera here, Zag."_

_"We were just talking about you, Zagreus."_

The lounge had been transformed into a literally warmer and also more welcoming place, a roaring fire in the great hearth. A ridiculous painting of a skeleton in sensual repose was framed above that hearth and green light reflected off the multifaceted mirrors of an ostentatious mirrored skull suspended from the ceiling, but these touches, coming from a place of poor taste but good intentions, further livened the environment.

“I don’t know what I expected. He’s grown more than I realized, this past century. Maybe Hypnos set my expectations too low,” Thanatos said there at the table with Meg.

The Erinys stood confident, drink in hand.

“Hypnos… He’s a completely different god. He’s lost thousands of years sleeping. Zag’s always had the energy to change. He never had direction until he learned about Her Majesty.”

Thanatos had much to grow accustomed to. The love that rushed through his inner parts at merely the thought of his lover spurred an unfamiliar degree of excitement and happiness, leaving him smiling at odd times no matter the company.

He considered the subject at hand.

“He’s begun to be considerate where he used to just be nosy. He could still act with more restraint, but he’s… done everything to make sure I’m alright. With the way things happened between us. With how things are between the two of you. I… appreciate it,” he said. “And I’m sure I’ll tell him as much, one of these days, or nights.”

Enjoying the depth of his feelings and confessing the depth of his feelings were two different propositions. 

He wanted to see the delight he all but knew Zag would light up with, and be the object of eager kisses. He had no reason to wait except an apprehension of making such a bold and permanent emotional change to the tenor of his long-routine existence.

Meg took smug pleasure in his words.

“You and Zag. Zag and me. It’s good,” she said. Then something shifted, transformed, her eyes holding a gentleness he hadn’t anticipated. “...but I’ve been thinking, Than. About me and you.”

His brow knit.

“Megaera. Has there really been a me and you?”

That gentle overture metamorphosized into a slow, wicked smile. 

“About me, and you, and Zagreus.”

Her insinuation blindsided him with an unexpected hunger entwined with his own surprised smile.

He had the urge, now, as strongly as he’d ever had, to kiss her, and gently. He thought of himself, levitating, and Megaera, tall and lean, and kisses past — of being bound up in her arms. 

Oh, that wasn’t the tack they’d take with Zagreus. Not at all. Not the first time, anyway. The excitement the proposition stirred in him called for greater enthusiasm. 

“I’d enjoy that,” he said, turning the possibility over in his mind and the words over in his mouth. “I think he’d enjoy it, too.”

\----

_"Erm, Meg, Than, what... what are you two... what's going on? Whatever it is, I can explain, or... wait, you're both smiling. Oh... let me just... take this in a moment here."_

_"You give Thanatos and me too little credit, Zag. We've known each other longer than you've been alive."_

_"I'd say we know quite a bit by now, all things considered. Isn't that right, Megaera?"_

Thanatos looked up the groaning body of his lover, past the flinching stomach and over the rising and falling chest to where Zagreus’ head rested, eyes shut, the lips smeared with Meg’s magenta lipstick damply parted and his hair in wilder disarray than was usual.

Meg, clever with her whip, had bound his hands above his head with the braided hide. She lay alongside him, toying with his vulnerable body while Thanatos applied his mouth to places south — his rigid cock, yes, exposed ass, too, as well as his nipped and bitten inner thighs.

Hands compelling Zagreus’ thighs back beneath his strength to expose him, he could feel the heat radiating from the prince’s burning feet on either side of him.

“Still think this is a dream?” he teased.

Zagreus laughed, blinking down his body at him.

“Only in the best way.”

If Thanatos had found himself smiling more easily around Zagreus, well, he was smiling now. He had to admit he hadn’t expected Meg to have Zag so thoroughly trained to be absolutely pliant under restraint. Zagreus and patience weren’t two things he’d ever associated, but he’d been rendered an obedient plaything with just a length of leather.

The God of Death relinquished one thigh to guide his lover’s cock back into his mouth, readily gliding over it while he enjoyed the fact of Zag’s attention.

He heard Megaera’s nails lightly raking Zag’s skin and the Erinys chuckled.

“You look like you’re enjoying him,” she flirted to Zagreus, her weight shifting on the mattress as she leaned closer in intimacy, lowering her voice. “I like to watch him go down before I take him.”

Thanatos shut his eyes against a rush of not shame but excitement, feeling his cheeks darken as he nursed dutifully at Zagreus’ length despite hardly considering himself shy. 

Meg did enjoy him applying his mouth to the phallic olisbos she variously wielded or wore. And now Zagreus knew it. Thought it. Might ask, some day or night, to see it — though here and now Megaera had brought only her whip.

“I’m enjoying him quite a lot,” Zagreus teased back.

Thanatos had nothing to compare to hearing himself spoken of as an object of pleasure between two people he held dear.

How had this turned from making sport of a bound Zagreus to making sport of him as he fellated his lover, warm and thick in his mouth, and doubted his short hair hid the dusky color of his cheeks?

—nevermind that he didn’t mind it.

He thrilled with how it ached through his cock.

He withdrew from his ministrations, rubbing his occupied palm over the thigh it still pressed up and back. 

He looked up with lantern eyes from beneath white lashes, sex wrecked voice no less confident.

“I think it’s my turn to enjoy you.”

When Zagreus flushed he flushed red, body as full of life as it was the darkness Mother Nyx had married to his being to revive him.

The three of them acted in concert, Zagreus freed but not free, pulled variously by lovers who rewarded him with kisses and ran their hands over muscles strong from years of training with Achilles and more powerful yet for all his recent toil. 

Zag had finally found the perfect purpose to complement his reckless impatience and it had sculpted him into a vision of martial prowess.

When Thanatos’ fingers brushed Megaera’s skin as they together plied their lover with attention while arranging him to suit, he was flush with affection for her deeper within than he’d ever cradled it. His breath caught at her sharp boned beauty. Her sensuous lips, her lidded amber eyes, the glinting metal accentuating her brow, ears, nose, and nipples, and her silken lavender hair long and heavy — he knew she was beautiful, and wanted her to know it.

His touch lingered a moment until she raised her eyes to a gaze that asked her if, maybe, nothing had bound them together over all their years because a vital missing piece had yet to be birthed into existence.

Her sly, flirtatious smile was his answer.

The Fates, he thought, never intended ‘me and you’, but ‘us’.

He smiled content and confident in return.

\----

_"...I thank you for your blessings, Queen Persephone. Your son and I... we always were quite close, but through all this ordeal, we've become rather inseparable, I think."_

_"Well, I can see that he has better taste than I do, Thanatos! I have a sense of how industrious you are. You just take care of yourself, please. And take care of each, other, too, all right?"_

_"As you will, Queen. I mean, all right."_

Thanatos shifted from Erebus into the mild Mediterranian air, the vivid blue of the pre-dawn light not unlike the perpetual blue glow of the haunted realm of the newly dead, though the horizon line was already growing purple, streaked through with pinks. The colors of the dawn sky reflected onto the surface of Poseiden’s realm, below.

The Underworld’s prince sat in the spring grass at the cliff’s edge here at the waning boundary of Demeter’s influence, surrounded by tufts of lavender, his legs dangling over the precipitous drop. 

He’d been easy to find, because Thanatos could already sense his vigor in decline.

“I’m glad I didn’t startle you off the ledge,” the God of Death supposed as a smiling Zagreus cast a glance back over his shoulder.

“Today’s not the day your dramatic entrances catch up with you,” Zag said, patting the grass beside him.

Thanatos drifted over the dewy grass and lavender beneath him and, gathering his chiton, let himself come to rest beside Zagreus, his own greaves-clad calves hanging off the edge of the rock. 

Already the water clinging to the stalks had begun to seep through the cloth of his clothes. He paid it little heed, pulling off his gauntlet and setting it beside himself in the quiet, then covering Zagreus’ warm hand with his own, tightening his grasp around it. While the nature of their relationship might have changed, and for the better, intimacy came familiar and easy after centuries of friendship.

Although he understood they only had a little time together, here on the surface, Thanatos discovered himself both relaxed and glad. 

Until this shared moment he would have said he preferred the Underworld to the surface no matter the circumstances. However, to be alone together outside the House was more than worth the overload of sensation: the growing light, sharp scented flowers, shrill birdsong, and the wet.

Playfulness sparked in Zagreus’ mismatched eyes as the prince slid his gaze from the horizon to Thanatos.

“Have I confused you with somebody else or have you been _happy_? Hermes even said _he_ saw you smile.”

He could remember the conversation in question, the matter of Zagreus’ dogged quest for the surface arising in the course of a routine discussion about the escort of the dead between himself and his fellow psychopomp.

“Is that so strange?” he wondered. “To be glad to be with someone I… care about very much.”

Love. But here and now didn’t feel like the moment, with Zagreus’ vital strength waning — albeit with the same lack of urgency with which the sky glowed brighter and pinker at the horizon. Even so, both his death and the sunrise were equally certain.

Zagreus chuckled beside him.

“No. I want you to be happy, Than. And I want to be the one to make you happy.” 

The adoration so obvious in his eyes, and his smile, and his relaxed poise commanded Thanatos’ full attention despite the many distractions around them.

Always ready to ham it up for an audience, the prince grew playful, a flirtatious drop in his voice:

“Don’t be afraid to let me know what more I can do.”

Scoffing, Thanatos looked out across the vast waters. 

“There _is_ one particular fantasy,” he drew out slowly before fixing his yellow eyes on Zag. “The three of us, and Meg’s whip.”

The laughter that overcame his lover threatened to pitch him off the precipice, but Thanatos had no concerns. He would simply catch him.

“Ha! Well, I’ll never complain about getting whipped into shape,” Zag teased, grinning. His brow knit in second thought. “In the bedroom, anyway. It turns out it’s not high on my favorite ways to die. But knowing it could kill me makes it more exciting.” 

That was certainly one strange way to look at it, Thanatos supposed. He wouldn’t know the feeling. He was Death. He couldn’t die. 

“Have you and Meg…?” Zagreus led.

“We have. I’ve been on both ends,” he answered readily. “I’m not in it for the pain, but I appreciate the aesthetic. The trust we share. It’s sensual.” He assessed Zagreus weakening form, picturing it strong, healthy, and laid naked for him to so pleasurably torment. “...although if I’m going to whip you, I’ll have to make sure I’m in practice.”

“I think I’ll enjoy that very much,” Zag said, eager despite the weakening quaver in his voice. “I have a keen sense Meg’s going to enjoy overseeing it.”

Thanatos recognized the struggle breathing was becoming at the same moment that for the first time in their existence he saw Zagreus’ sculpted face in the breaking light of Helios’ chariot. 

He tightened his hand against Zag’s, the hand beneath his cooler now than it was at first.

“You’re starting to fade,” he said, making the excuse to change their positions and gather his slighter lover to him, bringing his flagging head to rest on his shoulder. 

Resentment surged through him, Zagreus as pale as the snow that began a few stadia away.

The choices that brought the prince to this impasse again and again had all been made for him, yet he suffered for them, still.

“This isn’t right,” he asserted, the injustice palpable. He held Zagreus against him as the young god’s gaze drifted over the waters, Zag’s head tucked beneath his chin. “You deserve to enjoy the surface, and Olympus, with the Queen… with your mother. You deserve to _live_.” 

Zagreus’ attention flickered to him and Zag smiled, tired but grateful. Thanatos pressed his lips to the cool forehead. 

He no longer feared losing his love. The bond shared between them, at first something he resisted, an attraction that agitated him even to the point of that temporary separation long past, wouldn’t fail on grounds of distance or the passing of mere years.

Even if Zagreus ascended the heights of Olympus, at the end of his adventure he would return home. 

Thus Thanatos saw laid bare the grievous injustice that Death should have free reign across the world and Life be forever confined to its darkest depths.

“I’ve never met anyone more alive. You make the most of every minute,” he swore.

The body in his embrace sighed, growing heavier as its muscles lost tension. Thanatos did his all to keep him upright with no effort on Zagreus’ part, that the prince might watch the cresting sunrise he’d come here to enjoy.

“If we could just speak with your sisters. Apologize to them, for cheating. Make it up to them somehow,” Zagreus mused.

“I’m not sorry you lived,” Thanatos said, sudden and hard and terse at the same instant he knew he misspoke, tempting the Fates. 

He shut his eyes, praying he hadn’t erred, at the same time hating that it little dared be said. 

“I know I shouldn’t say it. I hope my sisters understand.”

Zagreus’ hand gave the barest squeeze there where it rested on his thigh. 

“Thank you, for this. I know you’re no fan of the sun.” He had faded too far to smile, but warmth lingered in his failing voice. “I’m sorry to make you watch, but… I think I prefer this to dying alone…” The reflective quality Zagreus’ words was new to his recent maturity. “The mortals… they must be grateful... having you there to… guide them.”

The rattle of his breathing spoke of a throat too weak for further speech, though for the moment his pallid form remained certain and solid in Thanatos’ arms. 

“Shh,” Death soothed. How many times had he seen this moment shared between two mortals? The lover and the dying beloved. He knew, for the first time, something of how they felt. The wretched unfairness of watching his love’s body inexorably betray him, no matter that they’d soon be laughing again. 

“I’ll see you back at the House, right, Zag?” he spoke against his lauraled hair.

He allowed the Styx to take him, Zagreus’ lifeless form disappearing into its crimson waters, sinking out of his grasp into nothing, such that Thanatos gradually drew the arm that held his lover in and suddenly there was no one there at all.

The pain of an imagined loss came and passed. He understood in that moment he would no longer be able to bear an existence without Zagreus as his partner and mate. 

He felt gratitude, then, that Fates willing such a thing should never come to pass.

Not only did he have his love, but the intimacy of a shared life with his closest consort, and she would watch over their impetuous Zagreus as surely as he.

Letting his arm fall to his side and raising his chin to take in the dazzling light of the morning sun, the sky and the ocean alight with gentle fire, Thanatos imagined Zagreus shaking the crimson water of the river of the dead off his hair as he rose from the pool in the depths below. Somewhere, Meg exercised her duties, or maybe she waited for Zag in the lounge, knowing he’d reached the world of the living and wouldn’t be long to return.

Later, he’d join them. A hundred times. The promise of an immortal future shared between the three of them.


End file.
